Safari $$ – the elephant in the room

Historically, African safaris are among the most expensive trips that we plan. Since the price tag can be eye-watering, it’s worth looking at what makes up that cost, and at what you’re actually getting for your money.

One of the most important parts of planning a safari is the conversation about cost. Price boils down to a number. Value doesn’t, and “expensive” means wildly different things to different people. For some, several hundred grand is a rounding error; for others, $20,000 is the trip of a lifetime. Between them sits every gradation you can imagine. When people have questions about cost, they’re often asking two questions at the same time. The first is where the price lands against the budget they had in mind, which is easy enough to answer, even if the prices in question can be high. The second is about value, which is subjective and much harder.

For some travellers, where you stay is of as much importance as what you see. $5,000 per person per night for the best of everything in the nicest place imaginable matters just as much as the wildlife outside the room. For others, decent food, a comfortable bed and hot running water are the basic standard they need to clear, and the wildlife they see trumps every other consideration.

Up to a point, you get what you pay for, especially at the more affordable end of the spectrum, where paying a little bit more generally means better wildlife areas, better guides and an incremental increase in the quality of your accommodation and the food you’ll eat. Past a certain point the wildlife stops improving and you’re paying for square footage, thread count, the chef’s pedigree and the contents of the cellar. Lions, it’s worth remembering, have no interest in your nightly rate. At $500 or $5,000 they’ll mostly be snoozing when you find them.

So what’s in that nightly rate? Nearly all camps are fully inclusive: meals and drinks, with a few exceptions — no checkout bill for $12 coffees and $20 orange juice. The majority of your activities are also included: guided game drives, walking safaris and – where relevant – boat trips. Camps sit in remote places and carry huge fixed costs — fuel, local taxes, regulatory payments. Then there are lease fees: most camps are on community or government-owned land, and what they pay for it goes directly towards preserving the wilderness around them.

How do you measure value? It’s too personal a question to answer definitively. If what moves you is staying in a spectacular room, with the kind of dining you could reasonably expect from the best kitchens in Europe, while zebra and giraffe graze in the background, then spending whatever it takes on the finest places available is valuable. Conversely if being barefoot in the sand around a campfire while lions roar in the fading evening light is what moves your soul, then that has equal value, even if the two price tags differ by tens of thousands of dollars.

At the end of the day, what’s vital is being clear about what matters to you when you travel. Value for money is all about personal preference. Planning safaris is an engaged conversation where we aim to balance your budget with your preferences to try and deliver the ideal trip for you. You needn’t have a colossal budget for an amazing trip but you do need to know what you like and what you’re prepared to spend to get it. Like a good chef, we assemble ingredients: some are extravagant, ruinously expensive and worth every penny; others are not. Navigating that is one of the main reasons people come to planners like us.

A safari, planned correctly, can deliver exactly to your hopes and dreams. And when that happens, when first you hear the lions roar, or find yourself surrounded by a family of elephants, or see a leopard stalk its prey through the grass, questions about cost tend to be the last thing on your mind.